Introduction
Since the end of the Cold War, it has become fashionable to assert that the traditional model of representative democracy is increasingly under challenge. Evidence in support of this thesis points to an accelerating decline in voter turnout since the 1960s (Delwit 2013; Dalton 2014; Thijssen et al. 2016; Hooge and Kern 2017) a slump in membership of political parties (Van Biezen et al. 2012; Scarrow 2015) and a significant fall in the public’s trust of national politicians (Nye et al. 1997; Hetherington and Rudolph 2008; Algan et al. 2017). A range of explanations have been produced to account for this rise in “anti-politics”. Some scholars point to a decline in “social capital” within the electorate: a disintegration of the social bonds and sense of civic engagement that once held communities together (Putnam 2000; Stolle and Hooghe 2005; Bauman 2007; Keele 2007). This disenchantment can also be viewed as the product of a less deferential and more critical orientation that citizens have adopted towards their leaders, especially since the 1970s (Norris 1999, 2002, 2011). Other scholars have asserted that the lowering of the voting age to 18 in most advanced liberal democracies is the key reason for this trend. This decision has enfranchised a group of young voters who are arguably the most “atomised” and least integrated into social networks (Franklin 2004). As a result, they are less likely to participate in politics, either at the national or even at the local level. Colin Hay has described these arguments as “demand-side” explanations (Hay 2007: 11–39).
However, according to Hay, this crisis of representative democracy can also be traced to certain “supply-side” factors. Anti-politics does not only (or primarily) reflect a lack of attachment (demand) on the part of the public towards their representative institutions. To understand this malaise, we must also consider the kind of service our political classes are providing in the twenty-first century. In particular, Hay draws attention to what he sees as the dominant tendency towards the depoliticisation of governance in the modern era. Depoliticisation refers to a process whereby public officials prefer to disavow or devolve responsibility for more and more areas of public policy away from the state. This tendency is partly driven by domestic sources, most notably the influence of public choice theory, which has developed a powerful critique of the impact politicians and civil servants can have on policy (Hay 2007: 90–122; see also Hood 2002, 2011). It has also been driven by external forces, especially economic globalisation and the way powerful transnational companies and financial speculators have “hollowed-out” the nation state. Put a different way, the public has become disengaged from politics precisely because their elected representatives give the impression that they possess neither the capacities nor the inclination to govern (Hay 2007: 123–152).
There is agreement within the literature that, while increasingly dominant, this depoliticisation process is still contingent and potentially reversible. Indeed, in recent years, we have witnessed a range of events that appear to confirm this assertion. Since the financial crisis of 2008, protests and demonstrations have sprung up in a range of countries against the austerity policies that have been implemented to reduce government deficits and reign in public debt. More recently, both the decision by the British public to leave the European Union (EU) and the election of Donald Trump as President of the USA have been widely interpreted as a revolt of the “left behind” generation against “the Establishment” in these countries (see, for example, Ford and Goodwin 2017; Inglehart and Norris 2016). Moreover, as we shall see throughout this book, disruption and resistance to depoliticised, neoliberal rule can be observed in a range of everyday, localised settings, as individuals and groups engage in ongoing battles with governments to promote and preserve their interests and identity. The question driving this edited collection is how to comprehend the contingent and dynamic ontology of depoliticisation: how to make sense of instances where the seemingly “natural” and omnipresent condition of depoliticised governance is contested and challenged.
This chapter reviews the existing literature on depoliticisation and assesses its utility for exploring the potentially contentious and unpredictable nature of this process. As such, it makes two claims. First, although multiple definitions of depoliticisation are present in current scholarship on the subject, to simplify matters they can be classified under two main headings: (a) as a systemic condition that inscribes the whole of society; and (b) as a more specific governing strategy or technique which originates at the state level but can have a significant influence on society. Second, while both approaches have plenty to contribute to our understanding of depoliticisation, they are not without their problems when it comes to appreciating the contingent and variable nature of this phenomenon.
Depoliticisation as a Systemic Condition
Scholarly interest in the subject of depoliticisation has become a real growth area in the social sciences over the last two decades. Naturally, there has been plenty of work produced that has sought to clarify, develop and refine the boundaries and scope of the concept itself. However, academics from a range of disciplines have also utilised the depoliticisation approach to investigate an increasing number of empirical cases. Political scientists have employed depoliticisation to understand the decision-making process in a range of policy areas, including economic policy (Burnham 2000, 2001, 2014, 2017; De Geode 2004; Buller and Flinders 2005; Swanson 2007; Kettell 2008; Rodgers 2009; Strange 2014); health policy (Wood 2015; Buller 2018); energy policy (Kuzemko 2014); environmental policy (Bluhdorn 2015; Wood 2016); immigration policy (Kunz 2011; Darling 2014); and international development (Harriss 2002; Kamat 2015). Researchers in sociology and urban studies have found the concept helpful to understand the politics of “the city” (Swyngedouw 2015; Beveridge and Koch 2017). Depoliticisation has been applied by students with an interest in language and linguistics to understand how political discourse and debate are shaped and delimited (Bates et al. 2014). Finally, political theorists have examined the historical origins of particular depoliticisation strategies with the purpose of revealing their temporary and conditional status and critiquing them (Jenkins 2011).
Although depoliticisation is a concept that has now established a firm footing in a number of academic subjects, not surprisingly perhaps it has been defined in different ways by its proponents. At the risk of oversimplification, in this introduction we propose to distinguish between two main usages of the term. For some scholars, depoliticisation denotes a generalised condition not just of the polity, but of societies more generally (e.g. Boggs 2000). This state of affairs is characterised by a consensual mode of governance where argument and dissent are marginalised and political space is colonised in the defence of neoliberal values and norms. In this sense, depoliticisation signifies a retreat of “the political”, where “the political” is synonymous with the qualities of contestation , deliberation and participation . Broader contradictions that may exist within political systems are reduced to discrete policy problems that need to be managed; citizens as a potentially disruptive collective have become a disparate set of individual consumers in a world where everything is increasingly commodified; elections are nothing more than a mechanism for choosing between similar administrators of the same neoliberal logic (Wilson and Swyngedouw 2015a). Some academics prefer the concept “post-politics ” (Wilson and Swyngedouw 2015b) or “post-democracy” (Ranciere 1999; Crouch 2004) to depoliticisation when it comes to describing this situation. Others use these terms interchangeably. In this section, we will employ the concept of post-politics to describe the literature which depicts depoliticisation as a systemic state of affairs.
As it has developed, this post-politics interpretation has become associated with a number of more specific claims (see also Beveridge and Koch in this volume). As suggested above, for some, this general condition reflects the triumph of neoliberalism as an ideology . Proponents of this view acknowledge that neoliberalism itself is a contested term (e.g. Boas and Gans-Morse 2009). It has been applied in a number of different ways to a variety of spatial and temporal contexts (Harvey 2005; Peck 2010: 1–34). That said, many definitions of neoliberalism do contain similar properties: a confidence that the market is an eff...